I've discovered a few things while reading An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. I have tagged this as 'dystopian fiction', but I think it is technically not dystopian. I am not even sure what this genre of books is called--it is reminiscent of The Hunger Games--so, alternate history maybe? It is a YA novel that has won a number of awards, and I can see why. What I have discovered about it is--this is not a genre that I am especially drawn to. That said--and the other thing I have discovered--despite it not being my preferred sort of story, it was still immensely enjoyable and if there is a sequel (and this story really screams for a continuation) I will happily read it. So, yes, it is a good thing to sometimes read outside one's comfort zone as you might well discover a really good read.

The setting--future? Past? I'm not really sure. The society in this story is modeled on Ancient Rome with soldiers, Legionnaires, Centurions and slaves making up the different echelons. It's not a happy society, and it is a society where the reader will need to suspend disbelief somewhat to accept the things that happen. There is some magic, but not really of the happy sort. There are Augurs and efrits and people who can heal simply by singing. Much like Ancient Rome, this Empire is controlled with an iron fist and it is hugely regimented. Violence is expected and strength rewarded.

Like all good YA novels, the story is peopled mostly by young people. They are in situations where they must live independently of their families either by choice or situation. For Laia and Elias, it is not by choice. Laia is a slave, or to be more specific, she is of the scholar class, but her parents were in the Resistance and have been murdered. She and her brother have been raised by their grandparents, who are brutally killed at the start of the story. Laia's brother is mixed up with the Resistance in some way. He is caught with a notebook filled with drawings that he should not be making. The Martials have swept their house and either murdered or taken prisoner everyone but Laia manages to run and escape. This is something that burdens her throughout the story and drives her on. She is certain that she should have stayed and fought and perhaps could have saved her brother, or simply died trying.

Elias is a student, a Senior Skull actually, at Blackcliff, which is a community in and of itself. It is the place where soldiers are trained. By the time you are a Senior Skull, you are nearly finished. You are one of the elite soldiers who will become a leader in the Empire. Not everyone makes it. As a matter of fact it is through all sorts of training and hardships that the crowd of students in thinned out, so those remaining are really the cream of the crop. And Elias is one of the best students, one of the strongest and most talented. And also one of the most unhappiest. He also happens to be the son of the Commandant, a leader without an ounce of humanity, a mother who would have left her son to die given the chance. No one escapes the Empire. But Elias, at the beginning of the story is planning to make a break from Blackcliff. He has everything prepared and only must begin his journey through the tunnels beneath the school to make it to a free land.

But Elias and Laia are going to cross paths. A soldier and scholar, who is soon to be slave. This encounter is going to change both of their destinies. Laia is determined to find her brother and help him break out of prison. Elias plans on escaping Blackcliff until the Trials are announced and he is chosen one of the competitors. The winner, chosen from the best students who will compete in a series of nearly impossible trials, will become Emperor. He decides to stay and compete with the hope that he may still find a way out of Blackcliff. Elias wants out, and Laia wants in. She joins the Resistance and infiltrates the Commandant's household as a slave and a spy. The two are about as different from each other and about as far apart in this brutal Empire but will find each needs the other to survive.

This was quite an adventure story, an edge of your seat thrill ride, because of course you have to find out whether either succeeds and what the cost to each will be along the way. Ah, and I see that there is indeed a sequel in the works, A Torch Against the Night, due out next fall. And so the story will continue.

Mix one part page-turning post-apocalyptic (lite) story with one part semi-stressed-out reader and one part extremely vivid imagination and what do you end up with? One hugely unputdownable read verging on the almost-too-real creepy. And to think I had this one checked out and in my hands before the holidays and returned it unread. But I do believe timing is everything and the moment was just not right back then. Boy was it right when I picked it up for the second time. You may have heard of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven? I can't predict if it will end up on the Baileys Prize shortlist, but it will most certainly end up on my own best reads of the year list later on.

I can tell you exactly the last time I read a book of the same edge-of-your-seat, almost too suspenseful caliber. It was Tom Rob Smith's Child 44. While the two stories are quite different, both have that same quality of storytelling where you get so literally wrapped up in the lives of the characters that they take on a certain reality. The Smith novel was perhaps more heart-stopping in the final chase, while the St. John Mandel had a unrelenting pacing that seemed to gain momentum as the story rolled out and took shape into a large picture.

The story begins on stage with Shakespeare's play King Lear being performed. The actor playing Lear has a heart attack mid-performance, drops to the stage and will pass away. One of the members of the audience who knew the actor rushes up to try and resuscitate him unsuccessfully. Amidst the other actors on stage is a young girl playing Lear's daughter and she witnesses this awful scene. Already we are introduced to three of the main characters who are going to either tell the story or be integral to the telling even while they are no longer present in the here and now. This happens to be the last day of the world as we know it.

When I first picked up the book I read to about the point in the story where the heart attack occurs. A play where an actor dies? I knew that the story would move around in time and that the young girl would become part of a traveling troupe of actors and musicians. Somehow this just didn't quite appeal to me. I should have kept reading. By the end of chapter two she had me hooked. Don't worry, I am not going to spoil anything . . .

"In the lobby, the people gathered at the bar clinked their glasses together. 'To Arthur', they said. They drank for a few more minutes and then went their separate ways in the storm."

"Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city."

Yikes. What? I knew more or less what the story was about, but maybe less than more and none but the most mentioned details. That same night a plane lands in Toronto, where the story begins. The flight originated in the country of Georgia bringing with it a particularly deadly strain of flu. In this global world of interconnectedness the Georgia flu will spread like tentacles of an octopus to all corners of the globe, swift and efficient and decimating almost entire populations of every city in every country. By the next day it is already too late.

Fast forward to year twenty. The world, far more violent and frightening, has continued but will never be the same. Now the story moves to "after". After the flu, after the pandemic, after all those people tried to flee (to where?) where there are no longer cities only settlements and a troupe of actors and musicians moves from place to place performing. It's all disorganization bordering on lawlessness. And here's where the story begins. That first day after begins year one and carries on.

There are a number of threads in this story and St. John Mandel weaves them together like the finest piece of silk fabric. That fateful night on stage, the actors, the audience, the friends are all important and connected but you won't realize it at first and not to know how they are connected or why it is important, and this is where her fine skills as a storyteller come into play. You might wonder what "Station Eleven" means and it has great significance and pulls those threads all together.

This is such a masterfully told story and if you are willing to give yourself over (and I always am) you will feel like you are submerging yourself under water, into a vivid new and very different world and only after turning that last page do you come up for air. Oh, yes, there is a real world out there. I do indeed have a very vivid imagination and of late life has been crazy and a little stressful. The author gives you all sorts of visuals and if you allow yourself to fill in the blanks . . . and I did, it wasn't just a page turner, but a creepy look at a 'what if' situation. What makes this so impressive for me is that the story is just one step away from being really plausible. Watch the news and see how your local hospital has admitted a new Ebola patient (which has happened recently in Omaha) and think of all those planes criss-crossing the continent and the globe. It couldn't happen, surely we're too prepared and advanced. But, maybe it could happen?

I thought of picking up Cormac McCarthy's The Road next, but then I quickly reconsidered. It, too, will have its moment. Station Eleven may be a Dystopian story, but it is not without hopefulness. Despite the awful thought of what could happen, it never felt like an entirely bleak and unforgiving world. Definitely recommended.

When it comes to books, timing really can be everything. I checked out Emily St. John Mendel's Station Eleven just before the holidays and read a page or two, but at the time it didn't quite grab me. Life was hectic, I was trying to finish a stack of other year-end reads, and somehow reading about a troupe of traveling actors in a post-Apocalyptic world wasn't working for me. So back it went unread. I've read numerous reviews and all of them good, but nothing would persuade me to go back and check it out again. Until it made the Baileys Longlist. It's weird what might be the impetus to pick up a book, and it's funny how a second try can be magical.

There are lots of books on that Longlist that appeal to me and I plan on getting my hands on a few of those that appeal the most. Station Eleven was just convenient. It happened to be (which sort of surprised me--maybe it is Fate?) on the shelves at my library. Knowing I wanted to try and read a few books from the list, it was nearest at hand.

So, timing. I read the first chapter. And then the next. And then the last line of chapter two floored me just a little. And that was it. I had to keep going. Eagerly. It's still early days in the story but I don't want to put the book down, which is a dilemma since I am in the midst of a number of really good books and a couple are within reach of those last pages. Now it is a juggling act. This book for the gym and this one for lunch and the bus and maybe if I finish here quickly I can read a few more pages before bedtime.

Whatever didn't catch my attention the first time around has faded from memory. Everything is just falling into place in just the right way now. The opening scene shows the death of an actor (on stage no less) on the very night that divides now from after. One of the men in the audience rushes in to help try and save the man. For him it is that moment when he discovers, after a rambling decade of unsatisfying and ungratifying work, that this is what he wants to do. He wants to help people. That same night a good friend who is an ER doctor calls to warn him about the Georgia flu, which has been brought to Toronto from Russia on a plane. And now everyone is dying.

Flash forward twenty years. A young girl who was acting in a small role in that same play is now in that traveling troupe of actors. The world is so very different than when she was only eight.

And that is where I am in the story. Two threads going. I was caught up in Jeevan's world and now it has moved to Kirsten's. It's the same world, but I don't know how it is all going to come together, and that is what is making me want to turn those pages fast and furiously. I have a couple of teasers to share with you. What is it about Dystopian fiction that is both so terrifying and yet equally as intriguing to think about. You wonder how close we are to just this sort of Society (at the same time thinking no, surely it couldn't happen, and please don't let it happen). But the reader wants to be part of that world, if only just for a little while, in the pages of a book, and at arm's length.

It is freaky to think about and St. John Mendel certainly creates a vivid picture of the world.

"No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by."

* * *

"There was the flu that exploded like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth and the shock of the collapse that followed, the first unspeakable years when everyone was traveling, before everyone caught on that there was no place they could walk to where life continued as it had before and settled wherever they could, clustered close together for safety in truck stops and former restaurants and old motels."

If every book on the Baileys Longlist is as attention grabbing, I am going to have lots of titles to add to my wishlist! I think I have already mentioned that I ordered a couple of the titles to add to the two I have on hand, and have requested a few more from the library. I always have lots to read, and now I have even more. If only I could have more time in which to read them all.